Last night was our 30th IRIS Nights lecture!
We had two very special guest lecturers, Academy Award winning producer Corinne Marrinan and blind photographer Bruce Hall.
The subject of the evening was a short film directed by our own Neil Leifer, co-produced by Neil and Corinne, and featuring Bruce Hall along with two other blind photographers (Pete Eckert and Henry Butler) called "Dark Light: The Art of Blind Photographers."
I didn't know about blind photographers until I heard about this film. The subject matter was introduced in a very artful way in the film, through interviews with a number of well-known photographers talking about their skepticism or curiosity about how a blind person can even be a photographer.
Bruce and Corinne discussed the unique case of each of the three, as each of them has a different kind of blindness.
Peter Eckert lost his sight later in life, so he had a lifetime of 20/20 memories to draw on to create his ethereal, painterly images.
(photo by Peter Eckert)
Henry Butler has been completely blind since he was a baby, so his pictures arise out of his musical sense of timing and his connection to people he meets.
(photo by Henry Butler)
Bruce has been legally blind since birth - he has 5% of normal vision and can only see blurry shapes unless he brings something a few inches from his face...
(This is Bruce literally reading a note from his Doctor explaining his condition.)
...so he takes pictures with a sense of what he might be capturing, but then has to look at large prints of the images (or enlargements on his monitor) to even see what happened.
Corinne-who in her spare time has been a writer on CSI for the past few years- was completely charming and kept drawing great stories out of Bruce with her innocent-sounding questions.
(photo by Damon Webster)
Then we got to see more of Bruce's amazing underwater photography.
...including the one that Bruce said Neil Leifer loved of the glowing Garibaldi off the coast of Catalina Island...
Bruce then veered into his other work: his ongoing (life) project documenting life with his twin sons who are profoundly autistic.
This one is his favorite.
And that was a wrap!
What a great pair! Thank you so much for your Joie de Vivre Corinne!
And your wonderful work Bruce!
(All photos © Unique for the Space except where noted)
After a brief intro to the intro by Annenberg Foundation Exec Director Leonard Aube, who spoke about the unexpected success we've had with our IRIS Nights lectures, Art came out, sat down and starting rolling out waves of images and stories for our delight.
Three classes of two hours each were held. Chad offered basic instruction on the two ways of making a book through Blurb - using their layout tool and using Adobe InDesign and uploading the layout. 
Chad showed printed samples of different layout options...and also show on the workshop screen how to approach different formats. 
Workshop attendees got hands-on advice an examples and also got special discount vouchers for their own future publishing efforts! 
The Photo Space was a perfect setting - giving arriving and departing students of all ages a chance to see our current exhibit and explore the possibilities. 
We even had a special guest visit by one of our POYi IRIS Nights lecturers, the amazing photographer Colin Finlay! 
The Blurb folks were totally engaging and supportive. They left us a number of sample books and promised they would come back and do it again soon. We hope to see you there.
